Mozilla Firebird 0.7 Released

Wednesday October 15th, 2003

The latest milestone of the Mozilla Foundation's standalone browser was released today. Based on Mozilla 1.5, Mozilla Firebird 0.7 features several enhancements, including support for webpage content in the sidebar, a stylesheet selector and a better Options dialogue. Some of these new features were examined in MozillaZine's August article on Firebird. Version 0.7 also contains numerous other changes.

Can someone please put the 0.7 release on my BitTorrent tracker at http://www.metashops.co.uk/mozilla as I'm currently at work. Thanks very much to whoever starts it off. Oh and please mention it in the build forums.

Hi,
I was really looking forward to 0.7 because in the last two weeks my 0.61 crashed quiet often. but now that i downloaded 0.7 im missing all the scrollbars. the browser has none neither the formfields. I switched the theme but that didnt change a thing. Is it only me who is experiencing that?!

Move the folder that was created (MozillaFirebird) when you unzipped it to wherever you want it. The first time you run Firebird, it'll automatically create a profile. To install extensions, go to the web page that has the extension you would like to install and click it.

They will probably be putting an installer on the next Firebird release.

Thanks very much - it's very difficult to find this info on www.mozilla.org and I think it would be nice to include a small text file that says exactly what you wrote, just to make things clear. It's especially difficult for new users who aren't experienced in the testing and nightly builds etc.

The new site design (http://www.mozilla.org/products/firebird/) is good - much more consumer orientated - but I prefer the look and feel of the new Beta Mozilla site (http://www.mozilla.org/website-beta/).

It would be good also if the main points on the new Mozilla Firebird homepage (i.e. "Blocks Popup Advertising") were hyper-linked to the corresponding section in the Tour pages...

Last thing, just missing the gorgeous Mozilla Firebird logo in the site's favicon!

I agree with that. The logo's way too fancy -almost unreadable. And there's no visual consistency between the various parts of the Mozilla website nor within the Firebird site -patent when you look at the "compare features" table. All this, unfortunately, seems a bit amateurish... The product is good, but the wrappin doesn't live up to it.

Btw, am I the only one to have a problem with the "Advocacy" link? It doesn't seem to lead anywhere.

I agree - the new beta site looks good, but the Firebird site is way too in your face. I wouldn't say it looks less professional, just a bit too "travel-agent-ish" if you know what I mean. Like it's advertising holidays in the sun. And the "Take a Tour!"? That just makes it sound like a company trying to sell you something, showing you how good it is to make you get it....(hmmm, actually not a bad idea to encourage new users when you think about it....). Still, I'd prefer to see it renamed Preview or Demo or something less overly enthusiastic. It would probably be alright without the exclamation mark actually...

You're safe to delete the directory that mozilla firebird is installed into, your settings are held elsewhere (in your profile dir - see the Firebird Help site for more details http://texturizer.net/firebird/)

Extensions are weird critters. Some are installed into the "application" directory (where the EXE is) and some into the profile. But if they let you set any options, all your choices are in the profile.

So, if you have any extensions in the app dir, you'll have to reinstall those after installing the new FB. But you'll probably find that your custom settings have been retained.

I would post this in the firebird forum, but they are down for now (yes I donated just now!)

My question is, wtf is with the new sidebar panels in firebird? There is no option to close the panel. So now I have a bookmark that opens itself in the sidebar, and once you've opened it, there is no way to close that thing down. You have to load one of the three stock sidebars, then go back to the menu, and turn that sidebar off again...

Please fix this ASAP, I love my sidebars in mozilla and have been missing them in firebird!!

Also, why don't the sidebars that have been added show up in the View... Sidebar menu? The only way to access them is through the bookmark. I hope this can be changed also.

In the default installation of firebird, sidebars come with close button on the top-right corner of the sidebar itself.

Just a wild guess you might be facing the same problem i'm faced (and solved) last time. I met your problem after following instruction from firebird help site to add lines to userChrome.css to remove the close button from tabbar. Apparently the code has some flaws.

Hello blazing flunky. I think they should change the name because they said they would, and they were wrong to use it originally. I would like to comment on other aspects of the browser but there does not seem to be anything noteworthy. With no moral standing and no outstanding features, the project seems stagnated to me. I had a desire for Netscape to survive Microsoft for a long time. Now that I have abandoned that hopeless struggle, I have a desire for any web browser to overcome Internet Explorer. Mozilla could do this if they would stop behaving like Microsoft. Microsoft may win by using underhanded tactics and covering mistakes. Mozilla should win by confessing mistakes and resolving issues (even if they are just naming disputes). They will never be as good as Microsoft at being evil, so they had better try something else.

Do you use the logitech mouse driver? It can remap the middle mouse button to a number of things, one of which is the middle mouse button event. If you map it to something else, that would be a problem for applications that do something with middle mouse button events.

I'm having the same problem. Using MS Intellimouse Explorer USB with latest MS drivers installed on Mac OS X and Firebird 0.7. I just can't get the blasted middle button to open new tabs. Any other thoughts? I've tried restoring mouse defaults and still no luck.

for logitech, set it in mouse properties to Autoscroll (not universal autoscroll or what it initially sets it to on setup) also checkmark to 'Use MS Office Compatible Scroll only'
Worked for me.
Heres an image of exactly what im talking about:
http://www.j3k3l.com/fileman/sexy/Jekel/mouse.jpg

OK, OK. Initial feedback was mixed but now it seems the world sees the 0.7 site more suitable advertising a Mexican airline than a browser. Going back to the more tried-and-true 7/15 design. You can't hit a home run every day of the week! -_-

Well, I'm not good at querying for a bug I don't entirely understand, and since it's such an obvious one I thought someone could shed some light on it instead of filing what may well be a duplicate. Sounds reasonable, doesn't it?

Any ideas when the German localized version of FB 0.7 will become available? Currently I only see TW and CN in the contrib-localized sub-dir. This would definitely help me push FB to some more people... ;)